Joanna Lumley

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand seven.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the actress Joanna Lumley. She came to fame as the high kicking glamourpus purdy in the nineteen seventies show The New Avengers, but the role that cemented her in the nation's psyche was Patsy in absolutely fabulous. A striking beauty with a cut glass accent, she had until then tended to play a certain sort of sexy toff, yet in abfab she stole the show, as a shallow, freeloading alcoholic has been, famous for her towering chignon and withering one liners.

Presenter0:57

Along with displaying a formidable comic talent, it was a role that toyed cleverly with her public persona, hinting at her own professional beginnings as a model at the precise moment in the sixties when London really started to swing. Joanna Lumley, let's start with Patsy, then. What did you think when you first saw the character on paper?

Presenter1:16

Well, she didn't really emerge until sort of episode two or three, and even Nadina wasn't as kind of wild. They both grew like ghastly, sort of, septic funguses in the corner. You know, they just got worse and worse, and Patsy's hair got taller and taller, and the smoking became more and more obsessive until they were on about a hundred and twenty a day. Their language got fouler, their behaviour got worse, but it kind of grew out of it. It grew out of uh performance, really. When you had that script from Jennifer Saunders, who was at that stage, of course, comedy royalty on British television, did you think yes, he is a bang-to-rights winner? Can't wait to do it. I knew it was a bang to rights winner, but I didn't know if I was right for it, because I I just kind of couldn't seem to get the handle of it. And Jennifer's quite a shy person and quite kind of remote to speak to. So when I went to do a reading with her and uh John Plowman, who's the producer, I found myself sort of swimming around in the dark a bit, and I went home and called my agents and said, I think you might have to get me out of this'cause I'm not sure I'm the right person. I mean, they seem to have cast me. They're probably too nice to sack me, so I ought to sack myself.

Joanna Lumley1:44

Saunders

Joanna Lumley1:47

I'm sorry.

Presenter2:14

My agent just said, Oh, look, it's only a pilot. You know, just do it. So I did. Extraordinary. How did you find the key then? Because watching as a viewer, you seemed to absolutely know who Patsy was.

Presenter2:26

I don't know. I just tried to make Jennifer laugh. That's the truth of it. That's all I ever tried to do. You wanted to please teacher? Yes, I wanted to please teacher, become teacher's pet. And given that Patsy did hint at areas that yourself are talking about. Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, that was lovely. And were you comfortable with that? Oh, absolutely. No, essential. It was essential that you draw on things like that. And the fashion world adored it because it was just dead right, you know. And what about being a woman of a certain age who is desperately trying to pretend that she's not that? Well, I've been that since I was eighteen. I mean, I've always, always longed to be older. And I've always have been so old that you can hardly speak about me. I'm sixty-one, and age doesn't really matter to me. I mean, people um people I think are much more exercised about your age than you really are. I mean, I think it's just terribly funny to be able to muck around with age. And also in ABFAB, we went back to Patsy when she was very young.

Speaker 42:37

Yeah.

Joanna Lumley2:37

Yourself are talking about the market.

Joanna Lumley2:51

Well I've been

Presenter3:12

We went back to Eddie and Patsy at school.

Presenter3:14

It was brilliant. Tell me about your first piece of music.

Presenter3:17

Having been on a desert island, I do know what it's like waking up, going through the day.

Presenter3:22

Having the language of being alone and having to search for wood and going to sleep in the evening. And so partly I structured this music to take me through the day on a real desert island. And I thought to wake up to Wagner and his Tannhuizer overture is absolutely beautiful. It really, I think, because the record I had when I was at school had pictures of mountains on it, and I adore mountains, and the idea of waking up to this sound and the idea of mountains is just blissful.

Presenter4:48

The Overture to Tannhuizer by Richard Wagner, played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Heitink. You mentioned in the wonderful introduction to that, Joanna Lumley, that

Presenter5:00

Because you've been on a desert island, you know what you'd want to hear. Let's remind ourselves of why you did this extraordinary.

Presenter5:05

Well, a sort of television experiment. Well, it was bizarre. The BBC said to me, What about putting Patsy on a desert island with no vodka? And I said it might not last a whole programme because it'd be funny for about, you know, five minutes. But what about me going on a desert island and really trying to tough it out? And they gave me terribly little. I was trained for a bit with the Irish Guards, and I was given a sort of SAS handbook on how to extract water from socks or something.

Presenter5:29

And I was sent off to this desert island. There was a tiny skeleton crew, about five people, who lived on a diving boat which would arrive every morning on the island at about seven o'clock, film me during the day and then go away again in the evening. This was long before I myself. I mean you weren't they weren't sort of uh flying in pizzas and things when nobody was. Not at all. They in fact had so miscalculated the food thing, they gave me a pound of rice in a bag, uncooked rice, and that was it. And I was on the island for nine days. They said, oh, the island would be dripping with fruit. But there'd been a late monsoon and all the bananas weren't pollinated, all the mangoes and things, if there had been any, dropped to the ground and rotted.

Joanna Lumley5:44

I mean you weren't

Joanna Lumley5:48

Things when nobody was looking.

Presenter6:05

There was nothing to eat, actually, except my rice, and I had to purify the water on fires which I had to light with a flint, and because the wood was wet I had to throw it took forever getting a little tin can. I wasn't allowed a spoon or a fork or a dish. I had to eat out of shells with shells. I lived like an animal, actually. I didn't have no soap or comb or mirror, or I had nothing to read, nothing to listen to.

Presenter6:28

So it was animal living on the island.

Presenter6:31

Really fantastic. How were you with the physical difficulties? Very good, because I'm I'm quite an quite an old toughie at heart, so I don't mind roughing it. So I slept in a cave. I don't mind about not wearing makeup. I like not having to change my clothes or care about things like that. What was the thing that you missed the most? Lettuce.

Joanna Lumley6:35

Very good question.

Presenter6:50

Lettuce, and rather like Ben Gunn cheese. And, um, funnily enough, you don't w the thing I missed the least was newspaper and news. Not hearing bad news every day was quite incredible, and you suddenly start finding that everything good in the world you listen for bird song and you look at things, you sit and appreciate things, but I worked jolly hard because a lot of the day was spent actually surviving. Are you quite stoic? Yeah.

Presenter7:12

I was brought up to be stirred. You have moments during the day which are very reflective and pensive, sometimes gloomy, sometimes you do get sort of homesick and think, I wonder how long I can take this. Other times when you feel completely jubilant and think, I'm in paradise.

Presenter7:26

Tell me about your second piece of music. Um because I was brought up in the Far East and travelled to and fro on troop ships all the time, the sea was quite a large part. It took a month to sail to Singapore from Southampton, five weeks to Hong Kong.

Presenter7:39

And so the sea became an immense part of one's life. You're on it all the time. And I've had the greatest respect for men who go down to the sea in ships. And this piece of music I heard sung by a boy called Yestin Edwards so beautifully, and I'd never heard it before. It's a lament called Tom Bowling, and Charles Dibdin wrote it at the end of the eighteenth century, he was a young sailor, about his older brother, who died

Presenter8:02

Out in the East Indian Ocean.

Presenter8:04

And it's the most beautiful lament for a sailor that I've ever heard makes me weep every time.

Joanna Lumley8:10

Tom never from his word departed, His virtues were so rare His friends were many and true hearted, His Paul was kind and fair.

Presenter8:33

Yestin Edwards and Tom Bowling. So this little child that was brought up to be a stoical adult began its life where exactly? I was born in India, in Kashmir and Surinagha, and um I was born the year before partition, so I don't remember it, because I was born in'forty six,' and by'forty seven all the British had to leave India.

Presenter8:51

But my father was with the Gurkh with the Gurkha regiment.

Presenter8:55

Um both my parents have been brought up in India.

Presenter8:57

So Britain was always called home.

Presenter9:00

But we didn't have a home here, and so after India we went out to Malaire, and Malaire is really my first sense of where home was. I felt I was I thought I was Malaire and I thought I belonged there. What what are your memories of Malaire? Everything very vivid um the extremes of temperature very, very hot well, not temperature, but v very hot, very black at night, sunset coming, rather like on my on my desert island, exactly at six thirty, like a light being switched off, the sunset in a blaze of colour and then blackness, the sounds of night, the great sounds of birds, the torrential afternoon rainstorms, the vivid colours, the heavy smell of flowers.

Presenter9:37

and an intense blinding heat.

Presenter9:40

And it was quite strange to come back eventually to England when I was eight, to softness of England in the middle of of summer time with cuckoos and

Presenter9:49

hedges tumbled with soft flowers and roses and blossom. You did come back to England. You went to school in Kent. What a transplantation. It was extraordinary because it was a change of everything, a change away from home.

Presenter10:01

Away from my parents, although my sister was at the boarding school with me.

Presenter10:05

I was very homesick for a bit, but homesick is like stage fright. You get over it. You have to get over it. And everybody was at boarding school at the boarding school you're at, except the second no, both of them had day girls. We used to like the day girls'cause they could sneak us in bits of food or stuff like that. And in fact, at my second boarding school, which was a convent, a very decent day girl brought us in some mice which we could keep in our blazer pockets. I kept mine for a whole term she was called Reaper Cheap.

Presenter10:30

At convent, then, was that where you discovered acting?

Presenter10:34

I discovered acting actually out in Maleara, in Malaysia at the Army School, when I played a queen with a crown on, and I thought, this is the business.

Joanna Lumley10:36

Did you have a single

Presenter10:40

It isn't that you like the centre of attention. I just sort of thought this is quite this is rather.

Presenter10:45

An excellent occupation. I think it was the adrenaline rush that was quite exciting.

Presenter10:50

Your third piece of music.

Presenter10:53

Ever since, when all around the world, wherever we were,

Presenter10:57

and originally it was on wind up gramophones. We had music, and my mother was passionate about Mozart, Beethoven, De Voljac, you know, the the the gorgeous ones, but

Presenter11:06

The earliest pieces of music I can ever remember were Beethoven, Six and Seven.

Presenter11:11

And so I thought I'd like to take a piece of Beethoven's Seventh.

Presenter11:15

Um, the lively jumping piece. Beethoven is stitched into my heart so much that sometimes I think I must have composed the music myself.

Presenter12:21

The third movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. Seven performed by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Kerrien.

Presenter12:28

You said that as a child, Joanna Lumley, you were I'm quoting here you were a horrible fat furious pudding, which seems entire seems entirely unbelievable. First of all, what were you furious about? I wasn't. I just think I occasionally looked a bit scowly. I was actually immensely happy and very good natured. And when I look at pictures of me as a child, apart from the odd ones where one's sort of scowling into the sun

Speaker 412:35

It's in time.

Presenter12:51

I'm grinning all the time, my teeth getting bigger and bigger.

Presenter12:55

When did you start to become beautiful? Oh, you're so funny. Look, at school I was absolutely repellent. I mean, I was completely smothered with spots, and my hair was like an army blanket, really kind of rough and frizzly.

Presenter13:07

and sort of lumpen, but we we didn't um pay very much attention to beauty. I just think we wished we were more beautiful. But you wanted to be an actress, but you ended up choosing to be a practice. I know because well I I at I when I was at school I auditioned for Rada. I did

Joanna Lumley13:17

I know because it wasn't.

Presenter13:23

Fearful audition. What did you do? Wrongly chosen. Well, I can't remember. One was, I think, from Lady Windermere's fan.

Joanna Lumley13:24

Did you

Presenter13:28

A play I'd never read. So, a you know, a hint for people who are doing auditions: read the play.

Presenter13:34

And I thought I'd daren try at another a drama school in case they turn me down and I lose my spirit completely. So I just w ran away from acting at that point. But being rejected from that one school, from Radha, didn't make you think, Well, I can't be an actress at just. Oh, no. No, I just can't bear people saying no or you're bad. I tear up bad photographs, not only of me, but of other people. I tear them up. I don't want bad stuff around. And eventually, when I get to read critics who've written about performances I've done.

Presenter13:58

If the bad ones are there, I rip them up, so they don't exist in my mind. I mean, of course they do, but in history I look back and it says a glorious lambent performance, gleaming, shining, and you go, Well, just save that one. I'm going to have the one that said leaden, wooden.

Presenter14:11

In those very early days then, when you were working as a model, I mean you were a top photographic model. You weren't somebody who just sort of did it on the side. No, I didn't. I w it was my s full job. It was my solid day job for about three years. And I was in what's called the top ten, in that I was used a lot. Did it come to you very easily? I mean, were you one of those annoying people who just ate what they liked and stayed up? No, I was fat as a pig. And we all had to starve ourselves. I mean, there was no anorexia in those days. I think I knew one anorexic model.

Joanna Lumley14:28

No, I s

Presenter14:34

But most of us just kept on struggling into clothes, and I think the lightest I ever was was eight and a quarter stone which is quite light for somebody who's five foot eight.

Joanna Lumley14:41

Touches

Presenter14:44

But I'm not eight and a quarter stone now, I'm t twelve and a half. No, I'm not, that's a lie, but actually I've also noticed people don't really mind if you say you weigh something, they go, Gosh, that's fantastic So just make it up just say it.

Presenter14:56

But you are very, very slim. And I've seen photographs from you back in those days. You were terribly, terribly slim. I mean, do you preoccupy you? I mean, you said we weren't an advocate. I think there were biscuits at the time called Limits. They probably still make them. They were made of cellulose or something. They blew up inside you like some ghastly airbag gradually taking up all your stomach. So you kind of felt terribly full. And what about I mean, you know, slimming tablets, injections, all of that? They used to have injections, yes. Th those got g oh, uh one every day. Goodness knows what they did. I didn't take it. No, no, no, you had to go to the doctor and pay him.

Joanna Lumley15:02

Did it?

Joanna Lumley15:03

I mean you said we weren't animated.

Joanna Lumley15:21

Does

Joanna Lumley15:26

Yeah.

Presenter15:29

I said in the introduction that this was at the very point that London started properly to swing. Were you aware of this extraordinary cultural explosion? It was huge, because it was all the peace and love, and it was it was the Beatles, it was a whole it was a sort of hippie way of thinking, it was nobody cared about money, it was almost disgusting to be rich. Reading sort of Gurdiev and being seen with a sort of book translated directly from Polish was very chic. Everybody was cool, everybody tried to be cool and clever. Did you feel like it?

Joanna Lumley15:33

Or relate.

Joanna Lumley15:34

Were you

Joanna Lumley15:38

Explosion.

Presenter16:02

Did you feel fabulous? Um, it was exciting. It was exciting. It was exciting to go to a nightclub which opened and all the stones and all the Beatles were there. And did you know these people? Were you part of the cool set? No, I hung around the edge. Right like Patsy, I sort of rigged around the edge and I got to know them a bit. And sometimes, if you did, you go, Yeah, fantastic, you know, no, I'm mad, you know. Except, of course, four of us went to see a Beatles concert at the Hammersmithodian, and we screamed our lungs out. We went nearly dead with screaming at the Beatles. We behaved like animals. We must have been about eighteen or nineteen and old enough to know better.

Presenter16:31

Tell me about your fourth piece of music. Well, this is just

Presenter16:36

Quite simply, it might be on the island forever, so you don't know. When Christmas time comes around, you want to celebrate it in some way. This record by Wham and George Michael.

Presenter16:45

Last Christmas is quite simply the best Christmas record ever, ever made. I'm sorry George doesn't like it, because, George, you're talking you know in a minority here, sweetheart, because the world adores it.

Presenter16:57

Last Christmas I give you my heart.

Speaker 417:00

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart.

Speaker 417:04

The very next day you gave it away You gave it away This year To save me from tears I'll give it to someone special, special Last Christmas I gave you my heart

Presenter17:30

Wham and last Christmas, to remind you on the island, Joanna Lumley, of all the Christmases you'll be missing. You were painting this uh very vivid picture then of life in London in the sixties, and there seemed to be

Joanna Lumley17:39

Yeah.

Presenter17:41

A sort of purity about it that's not aligned these things. There was something, there was an immense amount of hope, trying to share things, trying to make things better, trying to.

Joanna Lumley17:42

About it.

Joanna Lumley17:43

There was some

Presenter17:49

Have peace and love. I mean, these things are extraordinary today. In those days you had to share, you literally shared. And so people would share rooms and beds and spliffs and money and clothes. I mean, everything was shared, and there was something very nice about it. Were you in a flat chair with other girls? I was in a flat chair, yes. Four of us sharing a two-bedroom flat, and it was the top. I looked out of my window in Earl's Court from that flat and saw Terence Stamp walking in the street. I went down those steps so fast we were on the fourth floor, and I just got into the street heart banging, just so I could walk past and just go, um, oh, hi, you know, hi.

Presenter18:25

I know him now, I love him now, but I didn't then, and it was so cool, and he grinned at me, and said I.

Presenter18:31

I'm going pink even as I think of it. You are, I can confirm it.

Speaker 418:32

You are

Speaker 418:33

Yeah.

Presenter18:34

How did you look at this point? What would we have seen doing? I think we through a variety of things. Hair was going all every colour under the sun.

Joanna Lumley18:37

Uh

Speaker 418:37

Uh

Joanna Lumley18:37

Uh

Speaker 418:37

Uh

Joanna Lumley18:37

Through it.

Speaker 418:37

Right.

Joanna Lumley18:37

Two.

Presenter18:41

Gold stockings. They didn't have very many coloured eyeshadows, so I used to make red eyelids with lipstick and pu powder it down and

Presenter18:48

Many, many layers of eyelashes, two or three sets of false eyelashes, false hair pieces, cascades of hair.

Presenter18:55

Skirts hardly covering your pants, coloured tights, Bieber boots. Pretty much as you're looking today, in fact.

Presenter19:03

Um you found yourself then at that time unmarried and pregnant, which must have been uh much trickier than it is now. What what sort of reaction did you get from people? Well, my parents were absolutely brilliant and um Jamie arrived very early and and wasn't detected, as it were, until very late in the pregnancy. So I had a

Presenter19:19

an an amazingly short pregnancy, about a month and a half of knowing I was pregnant.

Presenter19:23

And and how did the I mean, when you went into hospital to have the baby I mean it was very, very, very uncommon, especially for a nice girl.

Presenter19:31

How did they treat you in hospital?

Joanna Lumley19:31

How did they

Presenter19:33

I was put in a private room.

Presenter19:35

Uh because they they d they said they it might upset the other p families.

Presenter19:40

If they saw me on my own.

Presenter19:43

without being visited by a man.

Presenter19:45

I mean, extraordinary. But Jamie was in in a little intensive care place because he was so ill and so tiny. So I he was never so I I just wandered about and then eventually left hospital, getting thinner and thinner and looking in at my baby who I wasn't allowed to touch. So it was quite a sort of strange time and I thought this is the very minute to stop modelling and to start this is a division in my life when I could start my new career as an actress. Huge strength of character on your part though because obviously I mean this was a time still when people routinely gave up their babies if they had them out of wedlock.

Presenter20:15

Well, I think they probably had much rougher home lives than I had. I had the most supportive family and friends.

Presenter20:20

And to have your own baby and to know that for the rest of your life you've got something so wonderful.

Presenter20:26

inexplicably brilliant to look forward to and to work for. So this is just fantastic. So you then have to take any job you get. So I was everybody's girlfriend. I'd kind of got my way into films.

Presenter20:38

And um I knew that I could throw myself into anything. We'll talk more about that in just a second. Tell me about your next piece of music.

Joanna Lumley20:41

Is this

Presenter20:44

On the island the as the day

Presenter20:47

It progresses, and you've had the intense heat, and you've lain, if you're lucky, under a banana palm and slept a bit.

Presenter20:53

And then the evening begins to come, and you're anxious about your fire.

Presenter20:56

Um you want to settle into the night prepared, because once it's night time you don't want to use up your torch battery, because it might disappear. You've probably only got one candle, and that's going to gutter out. So you want to get things prepared in the daylight, and you pray for the moon.

Presenter21:10

And on the island, every night I think'cause Stephen, my husband, was conducting Tourandot at the time.

Presenter21:16

Puccini's great piece when the terrifying crowd in China are saying perquetar de la Luna why is the moon so late? And they want the moon to arrive, so that, bloodthirsty crowd, the first execution of the night can take place, which can only take place by moonlight and every night wandering on the beach, as the sun went, the last strips of the light went, then blackness. Per quetar de la luna

Speaker 421:42

Where is the moon?

Speaker 422:04

That's all I'm doing.

Speaker 422:08

Please don't

Presenter22:37

The Hymn to the Moon, Perquetar de la Luna, from Puccini's Turandotte, performed by the Chorus and Orchestra of the Rome Opera House, conducted by Francesco Molinare Pradelli.

Presenter22:47

The part that people knew you for, you became famous, really, as as Purdy in the New Avengers. Did it drop into your lap?

Joanna Lumley22:52

In the new

Presenter22:55

No, I struggled for that. Um I think they they looked at about two hundred and something girls, and my name wasn't even on the list, and I had to beg, beg, beg to even see them. And they kind of looked at me darkly and I said, I just beg you to test me. And they gave me the test and gave me the part. And of course it gave you that status as the fantasy woman. So you had fame. Did fortune follow automatically? Fortune didn't come with that show,'cause we weren't very well paid for it. But what it did mean was that nobody ever had to ask who I was any more. Then I went into Sapphire and Steel, and that the first time was the first time ever in my life I was out of the red and into the black on my bank balance. Did you ever worry about this very precarious life, especially financially that you've chosen, given that you were accountable in terms of your bank balance for the money? No, I love it. I think I love it. No, I like I like the danger of

Joanna Lumley23:36

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Presenter23:41

of the acting profession, the circus quality of it, that you pack up and leave town, the dogs bark, the caravans move on. I love the feeling that um we never know the second we're out of w the job stops, the curtain comes down for the last time, and you clear your things out of the dressing room, you're out of work. What will we do next? Will it be big or small? But usually I got something, and usually I could turn it round to my advantage.

Presenter24:02

And enjoy it. Interesting also that given that you had this financial precariousness I mean, you still sent your son to Harrow. I mean, that must have that must have financially been quite a strain. Yeah, well, I was renting a flat. So, um, lots of people who are much richer than me would go, Oh, gosh, these school fees

Joanna Lumley24:08

Uh

Presenter24:16

And I thought, well, if you save up your money and just put it in a into a kind of bag and then take it down to the

Presenter24:20

to the bursa, which I used to do and tip it out, and we'd count it together and have a glass of sherry, and that would be the next school fees paid. Really? Yeah, and I found it was fine. And I I mean, we didn't have we didn't have a dishwasher or a washing machine, we didn't have holidays, we didn't have a

Presenter24:35

all the stuff that people think you would need. We did without those things. And clearly your attitude then seemed to be that, you know, make, do and mend and cut your cloth, all those sort of very British qualities, you know, stiff upper lip.

Joanna Lumley24:46

Does that look

Presenter24:49

I think it's probably sort of middle-class of another age qualities. They are quite old-fashioned. But they were in the sixties, you see, we hadn't any money, so we all had to make our own dresses and and do those things. I mean, it sounds pathetic now, but that's the way it was. I think it's so boring to walk about labels sticking off your clothes. I hate this thing of cutting yourself off from the world. Cyclists, people walking, people running, are just t tuned into some inner thing. They don't hear anything. They don't say good morning. I often say good morning to them and they run past. They can't even hear me. Does it make you feel curmudgeonly? Yeah.

Presenter25:19

No, I don't. Commodionly rises up in me. That creaking sound is me clipping my ancient hair clip back into my hair. It wasn't my bones as I moved, Kirstie. I must have warned you about it. Um, curmudgeonly, only for a second, and then I cover curmudgeonly with utter and absolute love. My job every day is smiling and loving people, and which I do, and I find that the more I smile, the more I love people, the happier I am, and the happier they are. Next piece of music.

Presenter25:42

Um

Presenter25:43

But I think music is really for you know, pop music is kind of for the young, and I think that as you grow older you grow out of it.

Presenter25:50

When I was at school with these ghastly spots and this irredeemably dreadful hair, but the heart very light by the time I was about twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and looking at my most repellent

Presenter26:01

Elvis sang this song called The Girl of My Best Friend.

Presenter26:04

I thought probably he was singing about me. Somehow I was going up with his best friend a likely tale and that I'd overlooked Elvis in some extraordinary way. I mean, the fantasy of this is that Elvis was too shy even to speak to me.

Presenter26:16

His chosen one, who had lovely hair and skin most fair. This song absolutely breaks my heart that Elvis can't pluck up the courage to ask me out. I just love him for it.

Speaker 426:26

The way she walks.

Speaker 426:30

The way she talk

Speaker 426:34

How long had I pretty tail?

Speaker 426:40

Oh, I can't help it, I'm in love.

Speaker 426:47

With the girl of mine

Speaker 426:52

Yeah.

Presenter26:55

Elvis Presley and the girl of my best friend. And a little nugget you just gave me there, Joanna. Patsy never wanted to smile full face,'cause she'd based her whole smile on Elvis's sort of Elvisly your snow, it's a bit like that. And so if she laughed, she'd just go'cause she just adored Elvis, as I do, as most of the world does. It's he's it's as hard to choose Elvis as it is to choose Beto.

Speaker 426:59

Me though, Joanna.

Presenter27:19

Let's talk about Patsy Stone then. She is this monstrous creation, as you say it.

Joanna Lumley27:24

If so

Presenter27:25

As you said at the beginning, the creation grew. Had you known that you could play comedy as well as you did? Well, I didn't think I never I never really thought I couldn't do anything actually. That that's not being vain. I mean, comedy was so much w laughing uh hysterically was so much part of one's life. What sort of work were you getting at the time that you did the pilot for Absolutely Fantastic? I may have been Iran McShane's squeeze in Lovejoy.

Joanna Lumley27:44

I think I

Presenter27:51

I'd been doing quite a lot of theatre. I'd done Blythe Spirit in the West End, and I'd done Vanilla for Harold Pinter in the West End. So I was doing sort of theatre-y bits then. People were shocked, though, that Joanna Lumley was doing this. I mean, you did a lot of things that people had never done before on screen. You got blind drunk, I mean, viciously drunk. You took a lot of drugs, you swore, there was a lot of sex in it. I mean, it was meaty stuff. But this is Jennifer, you see, she wrote it all. I just did it.

Joanna Lumley28:10

Yeah.

Presenter28:18

Some of the things I used to just go, we can't do that. You know, my prim convent girl would go,

Presenter28:22

But of course we could. Like what? What did you say? Some of the remarks they'd make. The cruel, the cruelty. The cruelty to Sapphi was just incredible, you know.

Joanna Lumley28:24

Did you remember?

Presenter28:32

And I adored Julia. We loved each other dearly. But the cruelty on screen of somebody who hates a child so much she would have aborted it is quite strong stuff, and it has never been done in a comedy before. You actually said that in one episode of the mother. She said I'd have done a knitting needle. I'd have got rid of you.

Joanna Lumley28:42

Uh

Joanna Lumley28:43

Yeah.

Presenter28:47

You know, I mean, this is dark stuff. And Patsy's job, insofar as she ever made it to the office, of course, was to be a fashion editor on a glossy magazine. Have you encountered people like Patsy in real life? I'm afraid I have, and they are terribly funny. I mean, they do laugh at themselves. But there's an awful lot of wiffle waffle. There was a fabulous character played by Helen Lederer, one of the girls in the magazine.

Presenter29:07

who is frightfully, frightfully stupid. And I can remember her saying, I've got a friend who's got some chairs. You could take photos of chairs. And I think that when you look at magazines now you realize that actually that's just about what they've got in them.

Presenter29:22

But it was funny and everybody laughed. That was the best thing. Everybody just laughed. They laughed till they cried. They would play them again and again, and laugh. And it won you two BAFTAs.

Joanna Lumley29:31

Yeah.

Presenter29:32

Did that matter a lot?

Presenter29:34

To get a BAFTA which is voted for by your peers.

Presenter29:38

For them to say, we think that was great, was just stupendous. It was wonderful.

Presenter29:43

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Presenter29:45

I think Natkin Cole was one of the greatest singers who ever lived.

Presenter29:50

The beauty of this song by Hoagie Carmichael is the perfect Desert Island song. It is the song. The sun is gone, it's dark.

Presenter29:59

The fruit bats have flown into the trees. There are night sounds, a little bit of clicking. You can just see the crabs running in the moonlight on the beach. The sea, covered with phosphorus, is sucking and sighing.

Presenter30:10

And then this voice

Presenter30:12

And this extraordinarily extenuated lovely melody with Nat Kinkole singing about Stardust I'm on his arm.

Speaker 230:22

You wander down the lane and far away

Speaker 230:28

Leaving me a song that will not die

Speaker 230:37

Love is now the stardust.

Speaker 230:40

Of yesterday

Speaker 230:44

The music.

Speaker 230:47

Of the years gone by

Presenter30:52

Nat King Cole and Stardust. You told yourself, Jan Olumley, that you wouldn't meet the man of your life, the love of your life, until your son was eighteen. And then, when your son was eighteen, you met Stephen Barlow. How did it happen?

Presenter31:05

I'd actually heard his name a long time before when I was about twenty one, and he was thirteen and at school. Isn't it extraordinary? He was a boy at school with son of some friends of mine.

Presenter31:16

And I then didn't meet him for another ten years. And I met him then, and it was very strange, like literally like getting an electric shock, or being struck by lightning, or being

Presenter31:25

Shocked in some way. And then we always went apart again. And you'd had this very brief, unsuccessful marriage in the seventies. So when you met Stephen.

Presenter31:35

You said it's like being struck by lightning. Was that because you knew? You thought that's the thing. Well when I heard then he also got married, but I was terribly shocked that I thought something's gone wrong,'cause I knew there was a pattern. I had precognition of something and I don't know what it was, but I recognised that he would be in my life. And then when we met again and we just talked for four hours and it all fell into place. It's just so strange. I sometimes do get these things about knowing things, do you know what I mean?

Joanna Lumley31:38

That's what I have.

Presenter31:58

Precognition, I think. It sounds a bit irif for someone. It's a bit worse. It's disgraceful, isn't it? We went to.

Joanna Lumley32:01

Participants.

Presenter32:04

I mean, for somebody who's so practical. You know, some old spliff in my fingers like fantastic. No, it does sound a bit I am practical, but I'm also a dreamer and a believer.

Joanna Lumley32:05

You can see I've got a sort of

Presenter32:18

He's a conductor and you you have a very I mean, is music a large part of your life? You seem to have a very har harmonious home life. Well, he is m music. He's like little Mr. Music. His head seems to kind of contain more music than anybody I've ever met.

Joanna Lumley32:21

Yeah.

Joanna Lumley32:23

Uh

Presenter32:30

He's just com totally brilliant. He's just totally brilliant. I love being with him. I'm I'm as lucky as the day is long. Your eighth record? Um something I've dreamt of for ever is seeing with my own eyes the northern lights.

Presenter32:44

And the idea of listening to Sibelius II, this phenomenal piece written by this gorgeous, grim, Finnish man who was so noble and so locked up

Presenter32:55

I shall step not at his side, but behind him, steadily, with my snow shoes going shush shush on the snow, and above me, rippling, blazing, falling like silk curtains, the northern lights with Sebelius too.

Presenter34:07

Part of the last movements of Sibelius's Symphony No. Two in D major, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbara Raleigh.

Presenter34:15

So, of course, Joanna, we give you the Bible, and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare. You're allowed to take one other book, what might it be?

Joanna Lumley34:18

And we give

Presenter34:22

Can I have a really huge atlas? Because Shakespeare is the man for me. He's the man. He's the one who ever asked will be at the other side of the Pearl Gates to let me in.

Presenter34:31

The Bible has got an immense amount of stories and fabulous things, so I've got enough reading material there.

Presenter34:36

But I would like this atlas because then I can remember the mountain ranges, see the rivers, and speculate on journeys I'm about to make.

Presenter34:44

And what would your luxury be?

Presenter34:47

Am I lied a little

Presenter34:49

Film camera, because I'd like only I'd just like to take the film Monsieur Hulo's Holiday with Jack Tatty in it, because it's so funny and so charming, and as most of my life I've wanted to be mistaken to be a French woman, a Parisian woman, um this could just make me think about France when everything was gentle and everything is very, very funny, and Jack Tatty is a genius. You can certainly have that. And if the waves were to threaten to crash to the shore and wash away your eight records, which would you run through the sand to save?

Presenter35:18

Beethoven is my man.

Presenter35:20

He'd be there.

Presenter35:21

Joanna Lumley, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island this. Thank you, Kirsty.

Presenter35:32

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.